The past year has been quite the ride for me as managing director of Gradigio. My team and I have had the chance to work with some amazing people around the world; many of whom found us through this blog. As a way of giving back to you, my loyal readers, I’m proud to announce our…

Hotel Marketing Makeover Contest

We’re going to be giving one lucky winner a complete internet marketing makeover…for free. The total market value of these services will exceed $25,000US.

What’s included

Everything. At least, everything I know your hotel needs to be successful online.

Through one-on-one planning sessions, group strategy brainstorming, and some hard work on our part, we’ll help the winner:

• Understand the current market situation for their hotel
• Perform an in-depth analysis of their website and overall web presence
• Oversee website changes (as agreed)
• Initiate a complete organic search optimization campaign (strategy planning & implementation)
• Initiate a complete paid search (PPC) campaign: planning, setup & 3 months’ management
• Collaborate on publishing a rock-solid content network that attracts visitors
• Plan and launch a blog marketing campaign
• Build a powerful presence in social networking sites
• Plan and oversee a systematic social media outreach effort
• Plan and oversee a video marketing strategy
• Evaluate mobile distribution options
• Build a localized web presence in important foreign markets (as needed)
• …and anything else we think of along the way that will help you reach more people

This will take place over a period of several months, and the winner will emerge with a powerful web presence that helps them increase direct bookings and overall sales.

The 4 ways to enter this contest

1. Upload a video to YouTube or Google Video explaining why you want to improve your hotel marketing. Title it “Gradigio Hotel Marketing Makeover.”
2. Upload a set of your hotel photos to Flickr, and name the set “Gradigio Hotel Marketing Makeover”
3. Write a post on your hotel blog announcing this contest (or) linking to this blog’s homepage & letting people know about it
4. Email 5 friends in the hotel industry a simple invitation to this blog (ex: “Hey, I thought you might find this blog helpful: hotelmarketingstrategies.com…”)

Whichever method you choose, just let me know of your entry by sending a quick email to enter@hotelmarketingmakeover.com that includes:

• Your name (& email)
• Your hotel’s name
• A link to your entry (video, photos, etc)

How the winner will be chosen

The winner will be selected randomly from all valid entries sent to the address above, and will be announced exclusively in the August 2009 issue of our Hotel Marketing Ideas newsletter.

If you enter this contest, I highly recommend you signup for the newsletter

Important dates

We will accept entries starting now (July 1) until the end of this month (July 31).

Enter now

The contest entry details are pretty simple, and described above.

To re-read this on the official contest website, please visit:

Hotel Marketing Makeover.com

While planning for a recent trip, I found myself conducting dozens of web searches to find information on my destination. These included:

• Flight information (Kayak.com)
• Airport transportation options (WikiTravel)
• The city’s best design hotels
• Guest reviews & photos of those hotels
• Best ways to get around the city (taxi, public transport, etc)
• Can’t-miss boutiques &  galleries
• Places to eat (Yelp)
• Special events going on
• Typical climate for that time of year (clothes to bring, etc)
• Best places with WiFi I can work from (bonus points if I can drink something caffeinated)
• Running paths for my marathon training (Google Maps & MapMyRun.com)
• Best places to photograph (Flickr is my favorite tool here)
• Interesting day-trips from the city

Keyword research tools confirmed my travel planning behavior is very typical. Every day, hundreds of questions are being typed into search engines to find this type of information about the city you’re in.

Your potential guests are turning to the web for information

Many online travel planning resources aren’t direct competitors, but relying on them to educate your guests is risky.  I see a huge opportunity for hotels to build their own destination information portals with a concierge mindset.

Are your potential guests going to find what they need from you or another website?

The web makes providing information easier

Before the web, it was difficult – if not impossible – for an individual hotel to publish a substantial amount of local information. Production costs would have been prohibitive, and distribution very difficult.

Now with just a simple website, you can share useful information very efficiently.

An example of proactive service

The Witt Istanbul Suites publishes detailed information on transportation options for getting around Istanbul:

Witt Istanbul Taxi Information

Since many of this hotel’s guests come from the UK and other English-speaking countries, the owner wanted to ensure the guests feel as comfortable as possible. To help overcome any language barrier, they offer printable directions in Turkish for the taxi driver:

Printable directions in Turkish

Providing this type of information is brilliant for two reasons:

• It helps guests to feel comfortable before they arrive
• It reduces the workload for your hotel service staff

Customer service 2.0

Instead of calling you directly with questions, tech-savvy travelers may prefer to communicate using the web. Twitter provides one opportunity to answer questions in real time. On the corporate level, we see Hyatt offering concierge services through a dedicated Twitter account.

HyattConcierge on Twitter

With just 131 updates, I assume many of their support requests take place via direct message (for privacy reasons). It’s not a bad start.

Actively engaging potential guests

My only complaint with @HyattConcierge? In my opinion, it’s not a huge improvement over phone or email support.

The real power of Twitter is in offering real-time service to people who aren’t aware of you (yet). Twitter search allows you to reach out to people needing help, and provide useful advice and information.

Independent hotels can do this successfully. A poster child of hotel social media success – New York’s Roger Smith Hotel – actively participates with guests to build their online fanbase.

@RSHotel Twitter Stream

Since this is a relatively new medium for customer service, little things like this gain a lot of attention and build a great reputation.

The best approach: Useful information + Real time support

Ultimately, hotels that want to use this ‘concierge approach’ to their marketing should use both approaches:

1. Build an accessible database of useful, insider information on their destination
2. Monitor real-time communications channels for opportunities to serve

It’s time to throw away the silver bullet

As marketers, we can fall for the trap of thinking all that’s needed is just one more tactic. One little trick that will cause sales to climb dramatically and eliminate our competition.

There is no secret

Great reputations are built around helping other people. It drives positive word of mouth – online and off – which ultimately brings you more guests.

It’s not unique or even particularly clever. But it works, and that’s what matters.

All the clever marketing in the world is useless if potential guests abandon you out of frustration. Hotels that figure out how to combine excellent customer service with new technology are the ones that will succeed online.

3 questions to ask yourself

• “What questions do I have when planning my own trips?”
• “What content could we publish that answers these questions for our destination?”
• “How can we get this information in front of the people that are looking for it?”

Feel free to download this chart to help you with your hotel PPC campaign.

To make smart marketing decisions, you need solid information. Of course, this is true in any economic climate, but with a possible slowdown ahead in the travel industry, the stakes are even higher.  All marketing expenditures must be justified by results.

If you’ve been marketing for a while, you undoubtedly know some metrics that work for traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.  However, the rules of the game change once you begin marketing online and encounter a wide variety of new media options.

What metrics should you use to measure the effectiveness of your digital hotel marketing campaign?  Let’s start off by putting aside a couple web marketing metrics that have been used in the past, but aren’t really that helpful anymore.

• Number of ad views – in the early days of the web, it was common to purchase advertising based on the number of ad impressions or views.  Now, there are other more effective ways (such as pay-per-click).
• Website visitors – the number of people that visit your website might have little correlation to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Should you track these?  Absolutely.  They just don’t provide enough insight.  So let’s move on to some more helpful metrics.

1. Conversion rate – what percentage of website visitors are booking a room?
2. Cost per booking – actually, you should be tracking a wide variety of “cost-per” actions for any advertising campaign. How much does each click, visitor, and lead cost? Spending must be tied to revenue gains.
3. Referral source type – knowing the type of websites that provide the most visitors can help you decide the direction of your marketing campaign
4. Search engine rank – How high do you rank in search results for each important keyword phrases?  Search is still the #1 way people find websites, so you need to list high for key phrases.
5. Social media mentions – How many bloggers and social travel networking websites are talking about your hotel?

Those are the core metrics that are important for anyone doing hospitality marketing.  Other metrics that could be useful in your situation include:

• Percentage of positive mentions in social media – this statistic is a little harder to generate, but the results are more insightful.  What is the overall consensus on your facility?
• Average time on site – how long do people stay on your site?
• Bounce rate – how many people leave your website without visiting any other pages (the lower this number, the better)
• Reservation abandonment rates – you need to know when and where potential guests are giving up in your booking system
• Top referral keywords – which phrases do people use to find your website?
• Number of inbound links – your goal should be to increase the quantity and quality of inbound links each month
• Google Pagerank – Google’s measure of website authority

Whatever combination of indicators you plan to use, the important thing is that you track and save this information.  You can only make efficient marketing decisions by looking at historical data, and then focusing your marketing resources on what works.

Let me ask you this: What metrics do you use for digital marketing?

So far in 2008, a number of negative events have taken place in the world economy.  First, oil prices soared over the summer, causing many people to re-think their travel plans. Then, the credit crisis intensified, causing the stock market to plunge and several established banks to fail.  Speculators wonder if the US and the rest of the world is headed for a prolonged period of economic recession.

As expected, the travel industry has taken a hit with this news.  A new survey by Travelocity showed that 66% of respondents’ travel plans are affected.  Many marketing professionals in hospitality are worried about how they can weather this storm.

But let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.

With all the gloom and doom going around, there remain some good opportunities for the savvy hotel marketer.

Life will still go on.  Business travel will still take place.  Weddings will still happen.  People will still take vacations, even if they tend to stay closer to home now.

You now have the opportunity to gain market leadership in this environment.  While everyone else is cutting back on marketing, you can gain market share by consistently running a smart promotions strategy.

Now is the time to increase your marketing, not decrease it.

Of course, you’ll have to play smarter.  The same old tactics and campaign may no longer be sustainable.  You’ll need to think outside the box, and develop a campaign that takes into consideration new trends in media and travel.

How can you play smarter?  That’s the subject of this series, and I’ll be showing you specific tactics in the days ahead.

Let me ask you this: how has your hotel been affected by the economy?